


someday we'll go all the way

by deadlybride



Series: let's play two [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Episode: s02e19 Folsom Prison Blues, Established Relationship, Multi, Slight D/s Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-10-04 11:34:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20470358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deadlybride/pseuds/deadlybride
Summary: On Halloween night, 2001, John Winchester makes a different call.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bratfarrar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bratfarrar/gifts).

> this is a continuation and AU from the last scene of 'one on, two out'; the Stanford years go a little differently for Dean, as a result.

October 31, 2001

The fourth game of the World Series is on Halloween night. Deacon's house is way out, maybe too far for most little kids to go trick-or-treating, but he comes home with a bag of candy anyway, and Dean's there to meet him, stealing the bag right out of his hand. Deacon swats his ass, tells him to leave some for the kids, and Dean's not responsible for whatever expression's on his face. This guy. Jeez. Deacon looks at him, like he knows—he always knows, how does he do that?—but he doesn't say anything, and they hang out and they watch the game and they wait for the kiddos to stop by, in their little costumes, their little ways of making fun in the dark instead of being terrified of it.

Dean made dinner, just some tuna helper and garlic bread, and their breath's gonna be a little funky but—it's good. They sit on the couch, their knees knocking together, and Dean gives candy away to a little vampire kid, and Deacon joshes him like it's nothing, like life is easy, like things maybe don't have to be so… miserable all the time. Dean grins at him. He knows he's acting like a shit, but he's thinking maybe Deacon doesn't mind that much, and if Deacon doesn't mind that—if Deacon doesn't mind—but then, then Dean's phone starts buzzing in his pocket, where he'd nearly forgotten it, and the whole world reorients itself, right then, a drunken compass needle shuddering abruptly north.

He gets out onto the patio, the night slapping cold against his suddenly hot cheeks. "Dean," Dad says, and Dean closes his eyes, leans against one of the sturdy wooden porch columns for a second.

"Yessir," he says, and all the soft golden light behind him drops away, all his concentration narrowed into the phone.

It's—not what he's been waiting for. _Got a job,_ Dad says, and Dean waits to hear coordinates or a map location or a monster to research, and there's nothing. _How'd your hunt go? You got it?_

"Yessir," he says, again. Robo-boy, insert a coin and watch him go. He makes a face, licks his lips, waits for Dad to say something else. "You—want me to come help? With your job?"

Pause, that stretches out. The connection's okay, but Dean can't hear anything in the background. Can't even hear Dad breathing, or his truck, if he's in a motel or on the road. He takes the phone away from his ear, sees the seconds still counting on the call. _No, _Dad says, finally. _No, I don't need you for this one._

Dean stops his pacing. Breath goes out of him, somehow, and it's a moment before he can draw it back in. "Okay," he says, like it's nothing, because it is. No big deal. Dad can manage on his own. There's a reason he's the best. "You—do you know, about—"

He can't get it out. Dad knows what he's talking about, because he always does. _Swung by, _he says, and Dean closes his eyes, listening as hard as he can. Like if he listens hard enough he'll see what Dad saw. _He's okay. Living in one of those dorms. No demon-sign nearby, surrounded by normal kids. Probably the best we could hope for._

Dean tries to imagine it, kind of can't. Some mix of Animal House and Revenge of the Nerds, Sammy in a Stanford-red coat, backpack and books, wearing that nervous dorky determined look he'd get. The sort of thing he and Dad could never touch. "He's okay?" he says, and Dad huffs, says, _yeah, he's okay_, but then, after a beat, he says, _I've gotta go, Dean. You can handle yourself, right?_

No, come meet me. No, I'll hook up with you in Nashville, keep your phone on. All Dean can say, because it's what he's got to say, it's what he's always said, is, "Yessir, of course," and Dad's voice says, tinny down at the end of the call in some distant place, _good, _and then there's real silence, ballooning out in Dean's ear, bigger and broader than the normal empty quiet, and that means Dad hung up, and so Dean puts his phone back in his pocket, because he doesn't need it, anymore.

He stands there, under the porchlight, looking out. World comes back, in bits and pieces. On the TV inside he can hear cheering—something happening in the game—and down the hill from Deacon's house there's a flash of headlights, some car going up or down the street. Not coming up here. They should've decorated, he thinks, distantly. He remembers, from taking Sam out, way back. That's how the kids know to come, that there's a welcome. You put out the candles, the pumpkin, the spooky crap, and that's when they know the door will open for them, and it won't just be a knock followed by empty, irritated silence.

Behind him, the screen door creaks. "Schilling just got an out, game's still tied," Deacon says, mild. He always is. "You want a beer?"

Careful, just asking. Like, either way, it's cool with him. Dean rubs his eyes with the heels of both hands, takes a deep breath of the chilly air. "Yeah," he says, and when he turns around Deacon's leaning in the doorway, holding the screen open for him. Quiet expression for a quiet guy, but all his focus is on Dean. "Yeah, I could use a beer."

Deacon nods, tips his head, and Dean follows the gesture and goes to sit on the couch, right side. It's sort of his spot, now. Fridge door opens, closes, and after a minute there's a cool bottle touched against his collarbone. He takes it, and before Deacon can see his face Dean says, "That was my dad."

Beat. "Figured," Deacon says, dry. "What's he up to?"

He just stands behind the couch, doesn't move. Other people, that'd feel threatening, Dean'd be keeping them in his periphery and making sure he had a weapon. He doesn't even have a knife on him, right now, and he tips his head back against the cushion. "Hunting," is all he says, because that's all he knows. "Guess he doesn't need me."

No response, for a second, before Deacon comes back to the couch. No _huh_, no _well—_no platitudes. Dean chews the inside of his cheek, stares down his nose at the TV. Diamondbacks are at bat, top of the sixth. Still a lot of game to go.

Deacon sits down. "They gotta take out Hernandez," he says, beer resting on his knee. Dean tips a look at him. He's just watching the TV, his expression even. "He's getting tired, see? Going to give up a run. Could be the ballgame."

"Yeah," Dean says, and he doesn't check to see what Deacon's talking about. He's tight-throated, his stomach all screwed up and tense. Sammy's okay, and that's what matters most, but after this long—but it's not for him to say. Not his call. He knows that. "Bet the D-backs win."

A sidelong glance, then. Little tip of smile, real attention. "Bet what?" Deacon says, inviting, and Dean doesn't move, doesn't have to give up a thing—and they just sit there, and they watch the game, and it's… good. He gets up and goes to the bathroom at some point; Deacon gets them both fresh beers. One more pair of little kids ends up coming, hearing the noise of the game through the open screen door, maybe, and Dean lets Deacon handle it, watches him give a couple Snickers to a little Batgirl and a boy maybe too old to be dressing up as a ghostbuster. But, hell. Better ghostbusting with a little sister than most of the crap he could be getting up to on a random night. Dean knows that better than most.

There's still plenty of candy left in the bowl by the time the game's over, but no way are more kids coming. Yankees win, in the tenth, the game stretching past midnight into November, and Dean doesn't actually care all that much but he still rolls his eyes, still cusses Jeter's name.

"Yeah, yeah," Deacon says, smiling, and then, putting his empty on the table, "you still owe me," and Dean smiles, too, down at his lap.

"Didn't actually make a bet, did we?" he says, like he's actually complaining, and Deacon just keeps smiling at him when he holds out his hand.

In bed, Deacon's steady, careful. Always in control. Dean knows he acts cocky, he wants people to look at him like Steve McQueen and James Dean all wrapped in one, but Deacon just—more than anyone ever has, Deacon… gets him. Has him. They screw slow, Dean on his belly on the soft mattress, and it doesn't hurt like it always did, before. Deacon's weight on him, his hands. His breath, hard at the back of Dean's ear, and his grip alternately firm and soft, guiding. Not demanding but telling. He lets Dean bury his face down into the mattress, lets him quiver, lets him grip the sheet and pant and moan, and lets him think about nothing at all but being right here, in this quiet bedroom in this quiet house, with this quiet man who doesn't want anything from him but this.

After, Deacon turns him over, kisses him with his breath still all kinds of screwed up. Doesn't quite let him catch it. "You're so good, baby," he says, and it makes Dean's stomach flop over like riding the Kamikaze at the state fair, but he grips Deacon's arm, his shoulder, hides his face, and it feels like—nothing else. No one else. Deacon lets him hide, kisses the top of his head. They're sweating, but Deacon hasn't turned on the heat yet and so the room's cool, and Dean doesn't want Deacon to move away.

He's feeling sticky, drowsy. Slick, between his legs, and he's never not used a condom with anyone in his entire life before this, and he doesn't know why that feels so—good. Deacon's hand rubs over the back of his head, cups the back of his neck. Dean says, for some damn reason, "Dad doesn't need me for anything," and it's muffled against Deacon's chest almost enough not to be heard, and that'd be less embarrassing. Deacon must hear it though, because after a second there's a squeeze against his neck. Feels good, and Dean squirms closer, tips his neck to get more.

A little huff, and Deacon keeps it up. Tiny massage, making Dean turn into more of a puddle than he already is. "Well," Deacon says, that way he has of saying it like it's a whole sentence.

He doesn't talk much. Dad doesn't, either. There's a squirminess about thinking about Dad when he's in bed with someone Dad's age—maybe older?—but. When Dad's quiet, Dean always feels like he's about a million miles away, mind on things way more important than the dumb everyday details like gas and where they're sleeping that night, food money and school. The dumb arguments Dean and Sam have. Had. They're not as important as tracking down demons, figuring out what killed that innocent family, fighting the dark. Dean gets that. When Deacon's quiet, though, he's… here. Dean doesn't know how to think about the difference beyond that, but it's—well. It's different.

Deacon shifts around, a little, tugging Dean in close in that easy way he has. His arm under Dean's head, his knee between Dean's thighs. They ought to clean up, Deacon usually does, but maybe not tonight. His arm's heavy on Dean's side and Dean's never really laid down like this with anyone else, all—cuddled up close, like a movie. Hasn't ever wanted to, really, especially not with a man, but that's just Deacon, again. Getting his way. Turns out his way is something that works pretty good for Dean, too. "Guess you're going to stay a while, then," Deacon says, real quiet over the top of his head, when Dean's starting to drift off.

Dean tips his head so it's comfier on Deacon's arm, his nose touching the hair on his chest. Everything's dark, and quiet. He's never been in a house this quiet. "Guess so," he mumbles back, and that's all there is left to say, that night.

His dreams leave him queasy and unsettled, black and flame, that feeling he hates where he's lost something he can't remember, and even so he's still so desperate to find it. When he wakes up, cold, Deacon's still there, snoring that quiet back-of-the-throat tv-static snore on the other side of the bed. Dean doesn't have to get up, no pre-dawn scramble out of town before the cops come looking—nothing chasing him, and no bloody dirty business to get to. For the first time in he doesn't know how long, there's no responsibility pressing him down to the earth. He doesn't know why but that makes his eyes hot, makes his throat all closed-up lumpy, and he turns his face away from Deacon, presses into the cool half of the pillow. Takes him a minute, breathing funny, trying to get himself under control.

Small grunt, behind him. He sniffs, wet, and drags his hand over his face, looking at the faint shapes and traces of things in the nothing-light from the moon peeking through the curtains. Listens to the sound of Deacon stretching—pop of some old-man tendon—the rough sandpapery sound of him scratching his nuts—but then a touch, to his hip, a soft skate up the ticklish bare skin of his side. He resists moving, stays like he's sleeping. Another sound from Deacon, _hm_, and he shifts closer on his own, just enough that Dean can feel the heat of him. His chest, his soft dick nudged against Dean's ass. His hand, resting easy. Dean swallows and hears it loud in the silent bedroom, and then closes his eyes. Scoots the one inch backward. Warm skin, close. Deacon's hand slips down to hold his belly, and his lips press against Dean's shoulder.

There were times, back in older days. When they'd stay in a place for a month or longer, and they had a room of their own, and sometimes he and Sammy would share a bed, before Sam got too big for that. Then it was Dean doing the holding, and his shoulders that were blocking out the cold, but it felt—right. Like home, a little, even if home wasn't ever something that was on the menu even if Dad kept promising it. Right now—Deacon's no bigger than him, no broader, but this feels—like that did. A little. Like something safe. Held, with nothing bad looming right over his shoulder. Deacon sighs and his breath's unbrushed funky, and Dean wrinkles his nose, and squirms closer, and relaxes. There's nothing he needs to worry about, nothing pulling at him. All he has to do is sleep. For the first time in a real, real long time, that feels—fine.

*

November second passes, unremarked. Deacon doesn't know the significance, goes to work like he always does. Dean watches TV, the day shows he catches in motel rooms, the soaps, the local news. Thinks, even if he doesn't want to, but it doesn't hurt as much as it has, other times. He goes to the grocery store further into town, burns a card picking up steaks and potatoes and a decent bottle of whiskey, and when Deacon comes home Dean has dinner nearly done, and he pours them both glasses like this is a movie from the 60s and Deacon looks at him, questioning, but he doesn't pry, doesn't ask, because he—doesn't. He doesn't. Dean could blow him, just for that. He blows him anyway, Deacon sprawled out in his armchair and petting Dean's hair, his ears, soft before he firms up his grip and makes Dean do what he wants, and that feels—right, better, easier. No decisions, no chance to second-guess. His mind blurs quiet, just gulping and working his mouth and letting Deacon direct, and he's so turned on by the time Deacon finally blows in his mouth that he could shoot if Deacon just touched him once, he really could. Instead Deacon strokes his cheeks, his tingly-sore lips, looks at him steady like he's seeing something beyond Dean's messy sweating face, and then tells him to go to bed, and there he fingers Dean so long and slow and relentless that Dean's almost too sore by the time Deacon finally ducks his head down, suckles at the head of Dean's dick with just enough pressure that it—oh, fuck, it works, it works, and Dean shakes for what feels like ten minutes after. Deacon holds him, the whole time, kissing him soft. Makes it good. Dean didn't know it could be so good.

November, then. Cold, though not as cold as it is other places. The pines around the house keep their needles but the road down the hill clutters up with dead leaves. In the second week of nothing, of keeping Deacon's house and feeding him and getting fucked, Dean finds a job, and he's holding the newspaper clutched between both hands, sitting on the porch in the cold, when Deacon comes home.

"It's dangerous?" Deacon says, and Dean says, "Yeah," because—duh, of course it is. Every hunt's dangerous.

"But people might die, otherwise," Deacon says, and Dean lets out a breath slow and says, "Yeah," because—of course, of course. That's how it goes. Bad thing in the dark and people screaming. His life up to this point, all the same.

"Well," Deacon says, standing there with his hands braced behind him on the porch rail, looking at Dean, and Dean looks down at his own boots, heart pounding. Yeah. That's—that's about the measure of it.

He comes in close and Deacon puts his hand on Dean's jaw, where he hasn't shaved in a few days, drags his thumb along Dean's cheek. He's more touchy-feely than any guy Dean's ever known, and it'd be goofy, Dean'd make fun, if it didn't feel so good. He sways close, and he doesn't know what to say but he wants, bad, and Deacon sees that, like he sees damn near everything, and he tugs Dean in without saying another thing and kisses him, slow and easy. He tastes familiar. Like—him, Dean realizes, and no other comparison needed.

He leaves that night, drives. The job's not far, up in Branson, Missouri. A dead girl, a dead man. Cheating, and then a dead wife. Doesn't take much work to identify the culprits, dragging a dead woman's misery out of her grave, and then to find the grave, and then to dig it up on his own in the cold empty night and burn that sadness right out of the world. Although, Dean thinks, standing there while the flames leap up, it doesn't mean the sadness is really gone. It's still there, its consequences echoing out. It still hurts, long after the deed's done.

In Missouri he packs up his motel room, his guns and his salt and his coat, shrugged on, and he pulls his phone out of his pocket and without even thinking about it he's opened up his dad's number, ready to send a text, only. Dad didn't send him on this one. He doesn't have to send a report, job done. He stands there in the parking lot, the moon big and lighting up the car to gleaming, his breath fogging the air, and he doesn't know what to do. He thumbs down through his contact list to _S_, and there's only one name there, and he wants to call. What time is it in California? He can't think of it, for some reason, and used to be he wouldn't care—would call, and know that there'd be an answer, no matter how annoyed and frustrated, how many times it'd be _you know I have school in the morning, jerk_, because underneath it all—there was always an answer. Been a few months, and he hasn't heard a thing, and he doesn't know now what'll happen if he dials. What'd be said, if someone picked up on the other end.

He pulls up to Deacon's house at four o'clock in the morning. The sun's not even close to the horizon. In the cold he trudges up the gravel drive, opens up the door with his key. Deacon didn't ask him to give it back, so he figures he's at least still allowed that much. The house is dark, and the bedroom darker, but Deacon wakes up when Dean's knuckles touch the door, turns his head. No real detail visible, other than the gleam of his eyes, squinting open. "Wondering when you'd get in," he says, scratchy with sleep, and Dean kicks off his boots and drops his coat to the floor and crawls into bed with all his clothes on, and Deacon just wraps an arm around his waist and holds him, and that's—that's it. That's all there is. No questions, no asking for more. Dean ducks his head down, grits his teeth, his chest hurting for some dumb reason. Deacon sighs, snorts, falls right back asleep. Dean thinks he'll stay up, his head all a stormy tumble, but he sleeps, too. When he wakes up he's alone, but it smells like coffee and there's clanking from the kitchen. The blanket's been tugged up to his shoulder, greyish morning light seeping in through the curtains. It's so comfortable. He fists one hand into the pillow, finds the warm spot, scrunches his eyes closed—but he's awake, for good, and he rolls onto his back, rubs a hand over his face. Might as well face it.


	2. Chapter 2

November 2, 2005

The apartment burns for a long time. Smolders. The firetrucks came fast, faster than Sam knew what to do with, and then it was all noise, flashing light. Flames leaping up out of the windows, water. Steam, gouts and billowing clouds of steam. Hard to distinguish from the smoke.

Sam's brain is working on two levels. In his body, he's sitting stashed out of the way, a shock blanket over his shoulders, his ass on the cold brick of the half-wall surrounding the park in front of the apartment. He's experiencing the night in flashes, stochastic jolts. A firefighter, checking the spot on his arm where the flaming bookcase burned through his jacket, soot-blasted cheeks and a raccoon-mask around his eyes. Their neighbors, coughing on the stoop, clustering around on the street. In his mind, he's standing a step away, calculating as from a distance. Coming home well after midnight, a last hurrah insisted-on before the law school interview, and Jess had class early and so didn't come, and Sam didn't really want to go either, but—he'd wanted to do something, after all. Something to take his mind off it, off of the nerves and off of the dreams, those awful dreams. All that fire.

He licks his lips. His mouth's sticky. Jolt of detail: her face, somehow still white, still clean, looking down at him with mild surprise. Like what was happening was so beyond comprehension it didn't even register as strange. Her stomach, red, and he wipes over his face and—god, god, the blood, it was still _on_ him, and he scrubs his skin rough with his sleeves, canvas scraping him clean, but he doesn’t feel—clean. He can't focus. Dreams, floating up to the surface, standing in the bedroom doorway with his lungs sucking in that first billow of acrid smoke and her not understanding, looking at him like there was something he could do. Like there was something he should've done.

A firefighter talks to him. A cop. He says his name, hers. He tells the truth, more or less. He was at a bar, with friends. She was at home. He came back, a little after midnight, and there was—a fire. Intruders? He doesn't know. Anything suspicious?

He looks away, licks his mouth again. God, he needs water. "I don't know," he says, and it's coming back to him. How to tell this kind of lie. Like he never left. "Our ceiling lamp was flickering, acting weird. Might've been the electricity."

The part of him standing five feet apart remembers, welling up. A million years ago. _Two truths and a lie. Well, maybe two lies and a truth. You just gotta remember which is which, huh, Sammy?_ November second. A fire. A woman died. A tragedy, but just an accident. Nothing for the police to concern themselves with. Where's the lie?

The hoses are off, the firefighters talking among themselves. Sam looks at his hands, wrapped unthinking in the shock blanket. Soot on his skin. Orange fleece. He squeezes the fabric, watches his knuckles turn white. Drags in a breath after too long of not breathing and tastes the foul air.

"Sam," he hears, and he blinks, comes back into himself. A hand, heavy on his shoulder, leaning. Like he's support. "God, buddy, I'm—I'm so sorry."

He nods. Flexes his jaw and realizes he's crying, or that he did cry. He wipes his face, smears the wet away. "Yeah," he says, and his voice comes out as something he barely recognizes.

A big squeeze, hard enough to hurt. He shrugs and the hand falls away, and he shakes off the blanket, too, and stands up, and his body aches from sitting so long. How long? He looks up at the sky, but there's too much light pollution to the see the stars. When he turns, Brady's standing there, waiting.

He looks sorry, tired. Sad. Drunk. For a second Sam's so furious at him he could kill him where he stands—it was Brady's idea to go out to the bar, to blow off steam—it was Brady who followed him all the way back to the apartment, whining that there was still partying to be done—it was Brady who crashed into the bedroom and dragged him out when the fire started, when Sam could have—he could have—

Sam closes his eyes. It's not Brady's fault.

"Buddy," Brady says, helpless sounding. "Can I—shit. Come crash at my place, okay? We'll—I've got some beer, we can order food. Let me do something, man."

"Yeah," says Sam, like he has any intention, at all, of doing any of that. Like help from Brady is what he needs. Her face, looking down. Her blood, weirdly cool and dripping. He tries a smile, knows it fails. "I've got to talk to the cops, I think. I'll come by later. Thanks."

Brady's eyes narrow, and he opens his mouth like he's going to say something, but then his eyes cut to the blacked-out hole where the living room window used to be. He nods, and touches Sam's shoulder, squeezing so tight it hurts again, and he smiles, but he goes. Sam's left alone, and he scrubs at his cheek again, smears where the tear-tracks are going tacky. Thing is, he doesn't feel like he cried. Just feels like a reaction, from smoke in his eyes, from the pain. He doesn't feel like crying. His chest isn't full and sore, heat isn't rising up through his sinuses. He feels—nothing, somehow, and intellectually he knows that's not how it's going to be. Not for long.

He's going to have to talk to her parents. He's going to have to face his friends. There'll be a funeral, or preparations for one—and with what? An empty casket. Through it all, Sam will know something no one else knows, and he'll have another secret buried behind his eyes where no one can see, and the whole thing will be—a waste, when there's work to be done. He looks up at the apartment, at what's left of it.

There's work to do. He has—the clothes on his back. His keys, useless now. His wallet. His phone.

He digs into his pocket, his shoulders hunched in. The firefighters are still working; no one's paying him any attention. The number's not in his contacts, but he knows it off by heart. It might've changed—how would he know?—but he dials anyway, his thumbs barely feeling the nubs of the keys. The plastic case is cold against his ear and he listens to the ring until the voicemail picks up. _This is John Winchester_, Dad's voice says, and Sam swallows, listens to the end of the message. Hangs up, after the beep, presses the edge of the phone hard into his skull. Breathes. Four years, and he thought—but that'll have to come later. He swallows, takes a deep breath, lips dry. Dials again, and folds over, his head almost touching his knees. It rings, again, longer this time, and when the ringer cuts off with the call being accepted he does actually think he's going to cry.

A muffled sound, fumbling. Fabric on the speaker. "Sammy?" comes Dean's voice, sleep-scratchy but as clear as though he were standing right at Sam's shoulder, and Sam folds his hand tight over his eyes and, for a minute, it's like he's eight years old, and the world's made new and full, suddenly, of monsters.

*

Three day drive, to Arkansas. Sam makes it in two. Dean offered to meet him, cautious over the phone, not knowing why Sam called for the first time in so long and Sam didn't know how to say, and so he just said, "Tell me where," and Dean did. Little town, the name familiar for some reason, but Sam can't place it and doesn't waste the time thinking. He rents a car, pays too much. Says he'll bring it back and knows he won't. It's beige and impersonal, has Oklahoma plates, hits ninety, and that's all he needs from it. Two thousand miles on I-40, stopping to pee and for gas and c-store food, jerky and coffee and wrinkled fruit. Catnapping in parking lots, at rest stops. He wants a gun, a knife, but everything he pretended not to have was in the apartment. He stops into a little grocery store and buys five pounds of kosher salt, covers the floorboards of the car in it; at a truckstop he gets a tire iron, and imagines swinging it like a baseball bat, crushing the face of—something, watching black gout out of it. He sleeps but it doesn't feel like sleep, it just feels like—time spent, nightmares closing a fist around his gut and wrenching him back onto the road again. Easy to cover a lot of miles, this way. Somewhere in Texas, midnight covering the desert in a haze of moonlight, he wonders: is this what it was like, for Dad. Is this how it felt, all the time.

His phone ringing wakes him up, ten miles from Shady Grove. He looks at the readout: her mom. He lets it go to voicemail, mouth dry. Missed calls: her mom, her dad, Brady, Becky, Brady. No one who matters, not right now. He keeps driving.

When he has to stop for gas again, he buys a map of Arkansas and texts Dean, _where?_ An address he doesn't recognize, the town name itching at him. Morning's pulling lazily up the horizon. Friday. Trees, grass. Long time since he's been out this way. His eyes ache with tiredness but he keeps driving, his lip sore from how he keeps screwing with it. The burn on his arm hurts.

He has to ask for directions at a gas station in town; three streets north, take a right. Up toward the outskirts, a hill. He climbs, past quiet old houses, big yards. Nothing flashy, but decent upkeep. He has no idea what Dean is doing here, but when he comes up past a stand of scrubby pine trees there's—oh, god. The Impala, parked in front of the last house.

His shitty sedan slams to a stop and his hands fist on the steering wheel and he can't breathe, for a handful of seconds. Oh, god. He hasn't—it's been so long. He wants to open it up, crawl inside and curl up on the back seat that was always his and sleep for a year. If only that were an option.

He pulls up, parks behind. Gets out onto the road and almost falls down, his legs are so cramped. The air out here's cold in his lungs, pine-smell on the breeze, and as he's looking at the house the screen door opens and there's—Dean.

"Sammy," he says. Question in it.

They haven't talked in… Sam doesn't know how long. A year. Longer. Haven't seen each other for longer than that. The porch casts a shadow and it's hard to see his face. Sam walks up the drive, gravel crunching under his sneakers, and as he gets closer he can see Dean's frowning.

"Dean," Sam says. He puts his hand on the stair rail, feels suddenly like he can barely stand. Dean's expression clears, changes, just like that. He comes out and the screen door slams shut, and in the sunlight Dean looks him up and down, says, "Sam, what happened," urgent, and Sam actually goes to one knee, crashing awkward down to the bottom stair like his bones aren't up to the task of holding him up anymore. Dean's hands clutch his arms and catch him before he falls further, because Dean's here, and if Dean's here that means Dean'll catch him.

*

He sleeps in fits and starts, has a nightmare that brings Dean crashing into the small room he's been put in. _Sammy_, he hears, Dean's voice cutting through the blur, and that helps but not as much as the mugful of cheap whiskey Dean brings him, hovering over Sam until he takes it in a long shot, like medicine. Dean's hand scrubs through his hair and he says, "Jesus, bud," rough-edged and sad, and Sam squeezes his eyes closed, scrunches back down onto his side, curled up like over a stomach wound. That's how it feels. Dean's hand lands on his arm, heavy and warm, and like that, finally, Dean's weight tipping the mattress, Sam sleeps, and it's sound.

The story wasn't that long, wasn't that hard to tell. There was a girl Sam loved and she was murdered. His whole life collapsed, just like that. He kept it simple. There were more things he could've shared, and he could've told Dean how good it was—how they fit together, how it was easy. No fighting, no bitter compromise. How she painted in the early mornings, in her pajamas, and the apartment smelled like smoky tea when Sam woke up because she hated coffee. How happy she was when he got the interview with the law school. How he could've just kept coasting with her, a holding pattern forever, because of the way loving her shielded him from anything that could wreck the life he'd built. Until it didn't.

Dean listened, his elbows on his knees, right next to Sam on the couch. Sam didn't look at him straight on, and so he didn't see what Dean's expression was when he said that Jessica was pinned to the ceiling, that her stomach was torn. That the fire leapt up from behind her, the whole place engulfed in an instant. Couldn't have been anything but the supernatural. They'd been told the story often enough, it wasn't like the details were unfamiliar. Dean gripped his knee when his throat stopped working and he couldn't say anymore, and then he tugged Sam into a hug, his hand on the back of Sam's head, and then he pulled him to his feet and said _you look like crap_, and Sam didn't laugh, and Dean didn't either, and then he walked Sam down a narrow dim hall to the back bedroom, and then—hours passed.

In the room the light's washed to a dim grey, sun already cut down by the clouds struggling through the lacy curtains. Sam rubs his hands over his face, turns onto his back. His watch says it's two o'clock, which can't be right, but then—of course, time zones. He wasn't thinking when he drove, didn't stop to change it.

His shoes are off. He doesn't remember doing that. There's a blanket tossed over his hips, too, and it smells like coffee, creeping through the crack in the half-closed door. He bites the inside of his cheek, his eyes getting hot, and he looks up at the ceiling, breathes deep. Years away, and he has no idea where this is, what place Dean's squatting in or renting, but he's home.

He swings up to sitting, grinds the heels of his hands into his eyes. Breathes slow. Remembers, the image cutting straight through the center of his head. The burning, her face. His arm hurts. It feels more real now, though. Not the nightmare that shoved him more than halfway across the country—not a crazy shock. The world's not blunted anymore, or blurred. He sits up straight, feels his spine pop in about a dozen places. Jessica's dead and a monster killed her, and that's the way his life is, now. The facts line up in the back of his head. He's going to get Dean's help, and their dad's, and they're going to get the thing that killed her.

A door opens, somewhere. Dean maybe coming in or out, but then Dean says, muffled through walls, _in here_. Maybe Dad? Sam stands up so fast his legs wobble and he has to sit right back down again, his head swimming. Okay, take it slower. His stomach cramps and he's lightheaded and he realizes, right, he hasn't eaten anything solid in—he doesn't even know how long.

He closes his eyes, hands planted on the soft old quilt. Somewhere in the house he hears Dean say, _I'm sorry_, and Sam's frowning even before the response: "Don't say that." That's not Dad's voice. A man, but not one Sam knows.

He stands up more slowly, this time, shuffles close to the wall in his socked feet, the carpet old but still plush enough to mask his steps. The details of the house are reassembling themselves in his head, all that training when they were kids to know the lay of the land since it could so easily become a battlefield. He's in the back room, and there's a hall, with a bathroom to the right and another bedroom to the left; beyond that, the kitchen, and that must be where Dean is, because there's the sound of plates being washed, clanking in the sink, and then the stranger says, soft, "Look at me, baby," and Sam's eyes open to stare at the faded floral paper.

"This is—really fucked up, Deacon," Dean's voice says, soft, but the house isn't that big, and the walls must be thin. Thin enough to hear a pot slam into a metal sink, and then a pause, a silence Sam struggles to fill with his imagination. Baby. _Deacon_.

Now, he remembers. Deacon, Dad's friend from the Corps, who'd saved his life in a skirmish and dragged him to safety. They came here once, when Sam was really little. He doesn't remember the man, really, other than as a tall handshake; he and Dean had run around in the backyard, playing tag, and Dean won, because of course Dean did. He has no idea how Dean ended up back here, or why he's here now.

He swings the door open and the hall's still dark, although the doorway to the kitchen's spreading an off-angle square of light across the brown carpet. Sam takes a breath, and then turns right, goes into the bathroom instead and shuts the door. He has to piss a gallon—how long was he asleep, really?—and this will give Dean the chance to tell Deacon whatever he needs to know.

Washed hands, washed face, and he scrapes his hair back, wet around the edges. He needs a shower, new clothes. His stomach growls again, and he hears a door close. First things first.

When he comes out, Dean's shoulders are bunched up and he's drying a pot, standing on the linoleum in his socks. Sam knocks against the cupboard closest to him and Dean looks startled, somehow, even if he has to have heard Sam in the bathroom. "Hey," he says. He squints at Sam, looking him up and down. "You look a little less like hammered crap."

"Thanks," Sam says, and Dean's mouth curves, even if he's not quite smiling. Sam watches him stoop, storing the pot in a cupboard, apparently where it goes. "What's the plan?"

Dean goes to the fridge and pulls out a bottle of Bud, holding it out until Sam takes it. "Guessing you haven't eaten," he says, and Sam's stomach gurgles, on cue. A huff and Dean goes to the stove, tugs open the oven door and ducks to look inside. Buttery smell of something pours out, mixing with the coffee, and Sam's stomach actually hurts, now. "Yeah," Dean says, "so the first plan is to eat, and then we—we'll talk."

Sam cracks the beer bottle, but doesn't take a swallow. Empty stomach, for one thing, but he's also just— "Dean, what's the deal, here?" he says. Dean's going through the cupboards now, pulling out plates, doesn't look at him. "Is this—are you living here?"

From the side, Sam can see Dean's mouth open, and then close, and his jaw flexes. He looks—the same, more or less. Maybe he's put on a few pounds. Muscle's part of it, but he's not as lean as he was when they were younger. A green flannel Sam doesn't recognize, jeans that fit, that look like they maybe didn't come from a thrift store. He actually looks better, Sam realizes, and as he's thinking it, Dean finally stops screwing around with the drawers, whatever he was doing to not look at Sam, and turns around fully, a line between his eyebrows that deepens. "Jeez," he says, "sit down, would you? Making me nervous. If you're just gonna hold onto that beer and not drink it, hand it over, I'll get you coffee."

Bustle, noise. It's like being a teenager all over again, Dean trying to distract him from whatever Sam had sunk his teeth into. Sam sits down, hands over the beer, gets a mug in exchange. _Arkansas: The Natural State. _Coffee with a slug of whiskey in it, the family special. The table's old but sturdy. Dean gulps at the beer, glances at the narrow door into the hall.

"This is Deacon's house," Sam says, when it starts to get clear that Dean's stuck. "Right? Deacon—what was his name. Dad's friend."

"Kaylor," Dean says, and clears his throat. "Deacon Kaylor." He picks at the label on the bottle, abandons that and scrubs over the back of his head. "Yeah. It's cool that you're here, don't worry, I asked."

"Are—" Sam says, but a door opens and he closes his mouth, looks with Dean to the doorway, and there's Deacon.

Not recognizable, by his face. Too long ago and he's a more or less average guy: neatish haircut, clean shaven, firm mouth, heavy-lidded eyes. Dean's height. He comes into the kitchen and he's half-out of some kind of uniform, polyester khaki pants but a soft-looking flannel up top, and he looks right at Sam, nods at him.

"Sam," he says, and just from his voice Sam knows that Dean told him. Sam's throat clutches, his fingers clutching too tight at the coffee mug. "Like your brother said. You stay as long as you need to, you hear?"

He gets to his feet with some difficulty, reaches out his hand. Deacon shakes it, firm, touches his arm. "Thanks, sir," Sam says.

Deacon's mouth quirks. "Just 'Deacon,' son," he says. "Coffee good?" Sam nods, sinks back into his chair, and Deacon nods back, turns and goes to the fridge, taking the time to squeeze Dean's shoulder on the way. "Always is. Do you boys need time to talk?"

He's leaned into the fridge, and Dean slides a glance Sam's way, looking—Sam doesn't even know. That face isn't one Sam recognizes, when he thought he knew everything there was to know about Dean. Causes a weird tilting feeling in his belly. Four years, and Sam's changed, he knows he has. Turns out other things did, too.

"Food," Dean says, after a too-long pause. "Sammy's gonna pass out otherwise."

"Sam," Sam says. Old argument that he's never going to win, but it's the principle. Dean's supposed to snark back, or roll his eyes. Instead one cheek sucks in and he's quiet, turns to deal with the oven. Leaning against the fridge, Deacon's eyes shift from Dean to Sam, considering.

They eat at the little kitchen table. There's just the two chairs and Dean drags in another from the desk out in the living room, and it's quiet until Deacon starts up a slow easy recounting of his day. Prison warden, of all things. Sam isn't expected to contribute and he doesn't, just keeps his head down and tries not to eat so fast he makes himself sick. Some kind of casserole, cheese and potatoes and chicken and broccoli. Sam didn't know Dean knew what broccoli was. He sips at his coffee between bites until he finishes it, and Dean jumps up and gets him a beer, and fresh bottles for he and Deacon. He's jittery, for some reason, but he responds to Deacon's story like he knows the rhythm of it already, knows the characters. "Did Ramirez help?" he says, and Deacon snorts and says, "What do you think?" and Sam scrapes up his last bite of buttery chicken and then stares at his empty plate and feels more lost, almost, than he did that morning. God, it was only this morning.

A hand on his shoulder and he blinks, looks up. Deacon's washing the plates at the sink and Dean's sitting next to Sam, jerks his head at the living room.

"I can help," Sam says, inanely, like this is him visiting some friend's mom's house.

Deacon shakes his head. "He cooks, I wash, that's the deal," he says. "Go on."

Sam follows Dean into the living room, then out the front door. The porch light's on, glowing golden, and the air's crisp, fall starting that tip into winter. He leans against the porch rail, looks out. Elderly truck in the driveway must be Deacon's, and then Sam's bland rental, and the Impala gleaming black, the whole huge slab of it reflecting the light. There's a creak behind him as Dean sits, a sigh.

Sam's supposed to say something, he's pretty sure. He stands, feels the weather-beaten wood under his hands as he flexes them. The day of sleeping and the coffee wasn't enough to wake him up; he's still drained, his heart sunk somewhere down around the pit of his stomach, even as his blood's beating at the back of his head, telling him to go, to move. He said to Dean, _my girlfriend was killed_, and it was true but it didn't feel true. _Girlfriend_, like that was a big enough word to describe what she meant for him.

"So," Dean says, finally. Sam rubs his eyes with one hand, smearing sand and heat. "God, Sam. Come on, sit down, you're making me nervous."

Sam huffs. "I'm okay," he says, and that's so far from true he's surprised Dean doesn't just laugh at him. From inside there's a blur of noise, the TV kicking on. He glances over his shoulder and there's the blur of Deacon moving through the old-lady curtains, just shadows and light, like something happening on another planet. In the here-and-now, Dean: sitting with his elbows on his knees, leaned forward and staring at Sam, but Sam can't see his face other than that. It's—weird, and Sam turns back to the empty yard, the darker night.

"I called Dad," Dean says, finally. "While you were sleeping. No answer."

Sam drops his head, breathes deep. "Didn't answer me, either."

"You called?" Dean says, and he sounds really surprised. Sam doesn't know how to respond to that. "Well—sometimes I don't hear from him for a while. Months sometimes. We'll keep trying. This is—I mean, this is big. This thing, popping up again, after all this time. It's got to mean something."

Another awful detail in an awful life, is what Sam thinks, but he doesn't say it out loud. There's a smell of a campfire, somewhere, and the blurry noise of evening news coming through the wall of the house. All this normal and he knows it's just a cover for the reality that's waiting, ready to tear through the night when someone least expects it. He sniffs, rolls his shoulders. "Months?" he says, rather than think that any longer. "So—what's that about? You're just out on your own?"

When he turns around Dean's sitting up, leaned back into the chair. "Not exactly a kid here, Sammy," he says, almost dry. "No, it's—I pick up hunts, I keep my ear to the ground. Last job I worked with Dad was… back in February, a werewolf up in Jersey. I can handle finding work on my own."

"And Deacon? He's helping?"

An angle of light from the window cuts across the left side of Dean's face, his jaw and mouth. Sam watches his lips press together, watches him shrug. "He's not a hunter," Dean says, after a handful of seconds. "But he knows the life. I've been here—a while."

"A while," Sam says.

Dean's head turns. "Yeah, Sam, a while," he says, and it's defensive, before Dean takes in an audible quick breath, blows it out.

Been so long since they talked, since they really talked. Sam doesn't know the rhythm of it anymore. Dean came to see him twice, swinging through Palo Alto on his way to some terrible thing, and it wasn't any easier then. That last big fight loomed over them and Dean couldn't talk about Dad, and Sam didn't want him to—but he did, too, like poking at a bruise. Wanted to confirm for himself that he'd made the right choice. They'd call back and forth sometimes, and that was easier. _What did you do today? Oh, I had my calculus class. What did you do? Oh, I burned a wraith alive. _Sometimes it felt funny; a lot of the time it wasn't.

"We've got to get you some clothes," Dean says, out of nowhere. Sam looks up, blinks. He's getting frowned at. "I've got some stuff you can borrow, but we can head over to the mall, pick up something that's actually your size."

So Dean, focusing on chores and crap, when there's something bigger right there. "I don't want to go to the mall, Dean," Sam says, irritation flickering up. Almost a surprise to have something cut through the fog. "We need to get out on the road, start hunting this thing down."

Dean's eyes go tight at his tone, but he licks his lips, presses them together. Doesn't rise to the bait Sam's putting out; another thing, different. Sam looks up at wooden porch roof, breathes slow, again. "We're going to figure something out," Dean says, all deliberate evenness. "But we're not going to get anywhere tonight. You still need sleep, and we've gotta get supplies, and we've gotta get hold of Dad. He's been looking for the thing almost as long as you've been alive, man. He'll have a place for us to start, especially after we tell him what happened."

So reasonable, and Sam doesn't recognize this either. He feels perpetually off, like taking a step in a dark stairwell and missing the riser. When he was eighteen he'd have picked a fight, and Dean would've risen to it after Sam needled him enough.

He wipes a hand over his forehead, one eye. "Yeah," he says, exhausted, and there's a creak as Dean stands up again.

"Tomorrow, okay," Dean says. "Hey. C'mon, let's get you cleaned up, huh? I can loan you some pajamas. It'll be hilarious, total highwaters."

He snorts, despite himself, and when he looks up there's a shadow of a smile on Dean's mouth. Sam looks at where it could spread, and doesn't, and then he follows Dean into the house.

The shower's life-affirming, even as it just makes Sam more tired. Worth it not to feel like such shit. Dean doesn't leave him alone—behind the curtain the door opens a few times, as Dean brings in a change of clothes, as he brushes his teeth, as he tells Sam about a hunt he did over in Indiana, something about a dead librarian. "Hot, too," he barely hears, through the rush of water as he rinses out the shampoo. "Well, she woulda been without that big hole in her neck."

"Dude," Sam protests, weakly, turning off the shower. A towel flips over the curtain rod and Sam grabs it, scrubs his face.

"Look, it's not a job with that many perks, you have to take them where you can find them," Dean says, and the door swings closed again, but he leaves it open a crack. 

Sam dries off, scrubs his hair until when he looks up at the foggy mirror he's a fluffy haystack. He's flushed, his eyes red like he's been crying. He looks away and finds clothes folded up on the toilet lid: a black t-shirt, so thin and soft it's like touching silk; a pair of pajama pants in green plaid, still new-feeling, thick and warm. They're about an inch too short when he tugs them on—not as bad as it could be.

The door swings open without Dean knocking and he looks Sam up and down, puts on a fake-impressed look. "Not as much like roadkill, nice," he says. Sam puts his knuckles into Dean's shoulder and shoves, just enough to sway him back, and Dean knocks his hand away and jerks his head. "C'mon."

In the living room the television's still on, mumbled voices and occasional music. Dean turns left, takes Sam back into the bedroom. The bed's been turned down, and those are different sheets, new, and Sam's dirty clothes folded up on the little chair tucked into the corner. "Thanks, man," Sam says, throat thick.

Dean glances at him, but doesn't acknowledge it, going to the pill bottle on the nightstand. "Tylenol PM," he says, rattling it. "No shame, okay, you take three and pass out like a drunk at Oktoberbest. I don't wanna see you until at least eight tomorrow morning, you hear?"

"I hear," Sam says, sitting on the edge of the bed, and Dean nods, grips his shoulder, disappears out the door down the hall.

The lamp's on, golden, and there's a glass of water on the nightstand. Sam turns the pill bottle over and over in his hands, listening to the slip-slide rattle, and from beyond the door there's more talking, low but real. Dean, and Deacon, being quiet, their voices blurring with the newscast. Eavesdroppers never hear any good of themselves, Sam thinks, but he doesn't know if they're talking about him, really. He doesn't know anything about this house, about who Deacon is, about what Dean's been up to, really. A stranger, in his own life, and it's half by his own doing, and that's not—fair, it's not fair even a little, but then when did fair ever, ever come into it.

In the dark he lies on his back in the bed, tucked into the clean sheets, watching as details push slow out of the night to his eyes, as they adjust. Books stacked on the little bureau, on the far wall. The gleam of the chair's metal back, barely picked out. Eventually the television turns off, and there's the weight of footsteps, more murmured conversation, taps turning on and off. A door opening, and closing, and a creak of springs barely audible, and Sam has no idea what time it is but he knows if he doesn't do something he's going to just stay awake all the way until eight tomorrow morning, and finally he lifts up onto one elbow and takes the three pills and gulps them down with half the glass of water, and he doesn't fall asleep right away, but eventually the night fades into dreaming, so it must have worked, one way or another, because he only wakes up when morning's filling up the room, and he hears the screen door slamming shut.

Dean's bleary, gripping a mug of coffee in two hands, when Sam comes into the kitchen. "Jesus," Dean says, squinting at Sam's hair, but he has no room to talk. Total shotgun-blast on the side of his head. He's in a too-big brown henley, boxer shorts, and otherwise bare to the morning. Sam blinks at him, not quite prepared, and still a little foggy from the sleep aid. Dean squints back, until he heaves to his feet, finds a mug, pours it full and adds a slug of whiskey.

"It's morning," Sam says, like it matters, and Dean just snorts and puts it into his hand, and so Sam sips it, heat sinking straight down to his gut. Ouch.

"You were supposed to still be in bed," Dean says, voice like torn-up gravel, and by the clock on the wall—whoops. Sam adjusts his watch, finally. "Whatever. Okay. Let me—yeah, and we'll—" and Dean drains his coffee in two long swallows, grimacing all the way, and turns to rinse it in the sink, and there's a splotch on the side of his neck, purplish-brown, in a spot Sam wouldn't be able to see if that shirt wasn't gapping-loose. Sam blinks, frowns. New, he thinks. New-ish. Dean drags his hand over his head, his hair rippling under the drag like light brown wheat in a wind, and Sam thinks, because he knows from bruises, maybe two days, and if it's two days, that means—

Dean goes and takes a shower, and Sam sits in the kitchen and looks at his coffee. There's too much to think about. There's something twinging. He scratches around the edge of his burn, where the skin's trying to come up new, and chews on his lip, and stands up. A peek through the curtains shows that Deacon's truck is gone—off to work at the jail, presumably. The shower's running, and Sam doesn't know: will this be one of those military-quick showers Dad trained into them, or the lazy hedonistic showers Dean'd take when they were left alone, that could go on for forty minutes? Sam sips at his coffee, used now to the sweet-sharp haze of whiskey under the bitterness, and looks around. Living room decorated like an estate sale. Old furniture, but more old-fashioned than decrepit. Cluttered but not dirty. A newspaper folded up on the coffee table, and books stacked haphazardly here and there. Lots of nonfiction, histories and biographies and commentaries, even some Sam read for college classes—but also cheap paperback fiction, Louis L'amour and Vonnegut, Agatha Christie and Pratchett. Sam turns over a crumpled-cover copy of _Jingo_ and a receipt falls out from a Buc-ee's in Denton, Texas, and unless Deacon's going to small suburbs for some reason, that makes this Dean's.

Sam stands there, alone in the house, and he finds himself staring through the wall while the shower's still running. The things he doesn't know. He puts the receipt back in the book, puts it back where he found it, exactly. Drains his mug, brings it back to the kitchen, and then walks on silent feet back out into the hall and goes into the other bedroom, where the door's been closed.

The curtains are drawn, the room dim. A queen bed, made up casually with the blankets tossed up near the pillows—four, stacked up by the headboard. An old wooden dresser, with a man's detritus scattered over the top, coins and scraps of receipts, an old watch, a snapped-off button. A newer trunk, at the base of the bed, and Sam touches the pine-wood top and then draws back. Laundry hamper, next to a chest of drawers, and it's nearly full, mixed shirts and boxers and socks piled in where it's easy to see. Dean's flannel, from yesterday, right on top.

When Dean gets out of the shower, Sam's sitting at the kitchen table with another mug of coffee—un-Irished, this time. Dean's in clean clothes, looking about a hundred percent more awake, and he claps his hands, seems antsy. "You think those clothes have one more day in 'em?" he says, and Sam shrugs and goes to change, even if he's reluctant to leave the cozy pajamas, even if his old clothes stink. Beyond the b.o. and car griminess, there's still a trace of smoke. He has to ignore that. It'll wash out.

They drive over to the "mall," a strip with a Salvation Army, a thrift store, a Famous Footwear. An outlet store just for underwear, for some reason, and it's mainly bras but Dean (grinning) shoves him inside to find that they have men's stuff, too. He buys three three-packs of Fruit of the Loom for socks and boxers and undershirts and by the time he gets into the thrift store Dean's got a pile going for him, shirts and jeans, a hooded sweater. "Black or brown?" he says, hand hovering, and Sam says _black_ and Dean nods and throws it over his shoulder, business-like, moving quick.

Sam hasn't been in a thrift store in—four years. Nearly. Turns out he hasn't forgotten how to fill a duffle, and neither has Dean. When they're done Dean drives them to the Hardee's and parks, and they go inside and get lunch. Bad, nasty food, and Sam inhales his like he hasn't eaten properly in months.

"Slow down, Sasquatch, it'll still be there," Dean says, but he's relaxed about it. His knee knocks against Sam's in the little plastic booth. Definitely not enough room for two guys their size, Sam doesn't know why he picked it. Dean sips at his Coke, looks out the window. It's a nice day. Big deep blue sky, no clouds yet.

Quiet, other than the muzak. A pudgy guy comes in a baseball cap and nods at Dean, and Dean flicks two fingers back in acknowledgement before the guy goes and stares up at the menu.

Sam feels turned over. "Friend of yours?" he says, quiet. Dean doesn't—have friends.

Sure enough, Dean snorts. "Not so much," he says, but then: "See him around town a lot, that's all. Think he has a night job, too."

"Right," Sam says, and sits back. He swipes a fry through his ketchup, sprinkled with black pepper—something he used to do when he was little, and he can't believe he forgot how good it was—but he just draws patterns in the puddle, thinking. He doesn't look up as he says, "So, really. How long have you been here?"

Another pause, and Dean shifts in his seat. "I'm still hunting, it's not like I'm—I get around, Sam."

Sam shrugs. "Sure. But you've got a… base. Right? So I was just, I was wondering. How long."

"I don't know." That's a lie, and Sam sends a look under his eyebrows. Dean scratches his jaw, looks out the window again. His hand's tight on his drink before he obviously relaxes it, finds a napkin to fiddle with. "It's not—it's not like I've got a lease or something, man. I came to stay with Deacon while I was doing this job, a mephit infestation, back in… it was October. 2001, I guess it was."

Sam blinks. Four years. That's—

Dean's cheek sucks in on one side. "I don't know. It just—Deacon's cool, you know? So I—you know, I'd keep finding jobs, but there wasn't a real reason not to—not to come back, if he didn't mind. And he doesn't mind, so. Here I am." He's quiet for a second, and then huffs. "Arkansas has shitty radio, though, man. You never heard so much Brooks and Dunn in your life."

Sam tries to smile but from how Dean's expression goes careful, grim, he doesn't manage it. "I had an apartment," he says. He doesn't know why. Dean knows, because Sam told him. "We—I moved into her place. We hadn't been dating that long, but I didn't like my roommate in the dorms and her friend had just moved out, so it worked. Two years." He doesn't realize he's fallen silent until Dean shifts, awkward on the other side of the booth, and Sam comes back to find himself chewing on his lip, almost painful. He lets it go, shrugs. "Felt good to have a place like that. Somewhere to come home to that actually felt like home."

A pop of Dean's eyebrows, and his eyes cut away, down. "I bet," he says. Swirl of his cup, melting ice rattling the plastic, and he shakes his head. "C'mon, unless you want to keep making ketchup art over there, Jackson Pollack."

How does Dean know that reference, Sam thinks, but he stands up and crumples up his trash, follows Dean out into the bright cold day, and thinks about all the things he doesn't know. Four years. And two years in there, too, when they weren't talking. Nothing happened, nothing Sam can remember. It wasn't a fight, a blowout screaming match over the phone that hurt like those fights with Dad used to. Somehow they just—stopped calling. There were two years before that too, though, when it turns out Dean was here. That whole time, when they did talk, when Sam would get woken up at three in the morning because Dean was driving and about to fall asleep at the wheel, and he'd doze through Dean telling him all about the making of the Evil Dead that he watched on VH1 the night before, and somehow it never came up that Dean was living somewhere away from Dad. That Dean had found himself a life, just like Sam had wanted to do for so long and like Dean had always scoffed at him for, avoiding the subject and making it a joke, and scolding him when that didn't make Sam let it go. That last night, in that shitty rundown house in Utah, and that fight had felt like it'd shake the shithole down to its foundations, Dean tried to get them to stop but he wouldn't take a side. It was only when Dad finally slammed out of the house, truck roaring to life and spinning gravel as he drove away, that Sam realized Dean wasn't in the room at all. He was sitting out on the porch steps, with a beer, looking tired. Sam was so mad at him, for that. That all he could summon up was just that he was tired.

At the house Dean sends Sam to climb back into pajamas, and when Sam comes out with his dirty clothes Dean's sorting out the laundry, in an ungainly pile on the kitchen table. Sam gets a glass of water, watches Dean handle it. They've never been much for sorting in their family, what with always using laundromats. Seems like Dean still goes for the same method, just like Sam: jeans and jackets in one pile, everything else in the other. A little weird, seeing Dean handle Sam's underwear—no weirder, maybe, than Sam going commando in Dean's pajama pants—and weirder seeing Dean's boxer briefs mingling in with undershirts and socks Sam doesn't recognize. "You got any delicate care instructions on these, Samantha?" Dean says, and Sam rolls his eyes like he's supposed to make Dean say _ha_ and smirk, and then he capably gathers up everything in a big armload and carries it into the pantry, where the laundry machines are. Taking care of it, as capable and steady as always.

In the living room Sam perches on the edge of the couch and dials again, waits with his phone clutched to his ear while rings play out. Voicemail, Dad's voice. Not answering. He dumps it down onto the table when he hears the beep and tries to think. It's harder than it should be. Clean, clean clothes, food in him, sleep under his belt, and there's a drive in his gut that's trying to focus him, to launch him out of here—but at what.

They take care of the laundry. Sam folds his new clothes, making stacks on the bed in the guest room. His new duffle's sitting open, ready. He doesn't pack it. Dean's in the other bedroom, rustling around, and Sam rubs his hands over his face, tries to focus. What is he going to do?

Dean knocks on the door lintel, startling Sam where he's been hunched on the tiny old chair. "I'm thinking burgers for dinner," he says, popping his eyebrows at Sam. "Yeah?"

"We had burgers for lunch," Sam says, but he stands up anyway and comes into the kitchen, because he truly has nothing else to do.

They form the patties, Dean making fun of Sam's technique, as though Sam has ever done this before, and then it turns out that through the creaky back door at the back of the pantry there's a little deck. Sam doesn't remember it from when he was here before, though of course he was tiny then, so maybe he just missed it. But, no—"Yeah, I built this, uh—two years ago, maybe," Dean says, busying himself with the grill. "You know he didn't even notice until it was almost done? He'd miss the house blowing away if he wouldn't start to wonder where his newspaper was getting delivered."

There's a bench, handbuilt too by the sturdy, simple shape of it. Sam sits, watches Dean bustle. "He seems like a good guy," he says, and tries to put no more into the sentence than that.

Dean glances at him, looks back down at the charcoal he's fussing with. "He is," he says, and that's… Sam nods, leans his face on his hand, looks out over the hill where it falls away. Woods, and shadows. Cold out here but the fire's started. A good man, and somehow Dean's nowhere Sam ever expected him to be but he's happy. It can't be a bad thing, and it's not. Absolutely no reason for Sam's stomach to feel as hollow as it is.

Somehow Dean timed it just right. The burgers are done, resting with cheese melting over the grease, and Dean's pulled potato salad out of nowhere when there's the squeak and rumble of an old engine. Sam watches Dean's expression shift, his head picking up, and he has to look away, gets up and covers whatever his own face might be doing with looking for plates, forks, mustard and ketchup in the fridge.

The door opens, and Dean calls out, "You're late," and from the front Deacon says, "Liar," and Sam says to himself, sternly, that he can't be a coward, he can't pussyfoot around this no matter what, and when he turns Deacon's leaning in the kitchen doorway, smiling at Dean's back. "Hey, Sam," Deacon says, after a few seconds.

"Burgers," Dean says. "And that potato salad you like, greedy, I didn't forget. Not like you'd let me."

Sam sits down, aching. He watches while Deacon crosses through the kitchen, while he touches Dean's side lightly, reaching into the fridge for what Sam's guessing is the customary after-work beer. He wonders how different it'd be, if he wasn't here. If it'd be a _hey, honey, how was your day_. If it'd be a _welcome home_, a kiss. He can imagine it, when he would've laughed at the idea, a month ago. He didn't even know Dean would—that he could. 

They eat. The burgers are fantastic. Potato salad's a little mayonnaisey for Sam's taste, but it wasn't made with his taste in mind. The talk's small, easy, and Sam manages to dredge up the dregs of his social skills and asks Deacon how long he's been with the prison, if he enjoys it. That makes Deacon huff, but not meanly. He speaks honestly, plain. Looks at Dean when he's talking and really listens. He is, really, a decent guy.

When they're done Sam goes to stack the plates and Deacon holds up a hand. "Seriously, let me," Sam says. Screw politeness, he needs the minute by himself.

Deacon shakes his head, though. "No, I mean—both of you boys. I got something."

"What?" Dean says.

Deacon looks at him, and Sam can tell that he touches Dean's thigh, under the table. "Something," he repeats, and sighs for some reason. "Hold on, I'll be right back."

Sam exchanges a look with Dean. The front door opens, and closes, and they're both in the living room when he comes back in with a box in his hands. He blinks to see them there, shoulder to shoulder, and smiles a little. "Got delivered to the prison," he says, and holds it out. Dean takes it, and Sam reads over his shoulder. _Dean Winchester, c/o Deacon Kaylor_. That's—Dad's handwriting. "Came with this morning's mail. Already opened for contraband, sorry."

Dean looks over his shoulder at Sam, and then tears into it, past the already torn edge. A box, and something wrapped in paper, which Dean shoves out of the way to find—

"This is Dad's journal," Dean says. Like that wasn't obvious. He flips it open and there's all the familiar handwriting, the careful drawings, the newspaper clippings and notes and history.

"He'd never just give it up," Sam says, and looks up to find Deacon watching them. No—he's looking at Dean, and there's something in his face that Sam doesn't quite recognize.

While Deacon washes the dishes they pore over the journal, flipping through it. Doesn't take long to find the coordinates—and a check of the huge atlas Dean pulls off the bookshelf shows that it's for a spot in Colorado, some random forest. Why? "Do you think—is something there?" Sam says. Dean's leaning over the atlas on the coffee table, not talking. "Something about whatever killed Jessica, killed Mom? Or—maybe Dad wants us to meet him there."

Clanking from the kitchen, plates in a metal sink. Dean rubs his jaw, slow. "Maybe," he says.

"But—I mean, if he sent it here, he must have meant for you to have it, right? So why now? Why send it, unless it has something to do with…" Sam trails off. This is all obvious, and Dean's maybe not a scholar but he can put it together just as easy as Sam can. That's not the hesitation.

Dean sits there on the couch, on the right side, and Sam looks at him and sees—Deacon sitting on the left, just like they were the other night. The television on. Or different—them both reading (and Dean, reading, voluntarily!), with their feet up on the coffee table, and their shoulders leaned together. Dinners, coffee in the morning. Dean building something, when Sam thought he wasn't capable.

He feels himself say it without intending to. "I can go alone." The words come out very even; he hears them as though he's standing in the doorway, staring at himself. Dean's staring at him, too, now. "It's not—maybe it's nothing. I can go."

Water runs, in the kitchen, and Dean's attention flicks from Sam to the open doorway, the brighter light there. He chews his lip, looking at something Sam can't see, and then shakes his head, then drops it like all the muscles in his neck just cut. "You think I'm letting my rusty-ass little brother go off to mysterious coordinates alone?" he says. It's not said like a joke. "C'mon, I thought you were the smart one, college boy."

Sam swallows. "Dean," he says, and that's all he has. He should insist, he should stand up and just go. A stupid, hopeful balloon rises in his chest, without his say-so.

"Yeah, that's me," Dean says, under his breath, and stands. "Dad's not answering our calls and he sends us this? Yeah. We've gotta go."

"Where?" Deacon says. He's in the doorway, suddenly, wiping his hands on a towel.

Sam stands, too, for no reason. Dean says, "Colorado," and shrugs, like it's nothing. Deacon's mouth turns up at one corner and he looks at Dean, long and steady, and Sam wants to turn away, wants to go out into the car and hide, wants to be anywhere at all but here.

He goes and packs his duffel. He closes the guest room door and doesn't listen, doesn't try to imagine. They've got a direction, and maybe Dad's waiting at the other end. That's what he's got to focus on. Something bad's out there and they've got to stop it. Dean's on board. That's what matters.

They leave that night. No reason not to, Dean says, and it's a long drive. Sam stashes his bag in the Impala's trunk. There's the familiar false bottom, all Dad's neatness destroyed in Dean's comfortable mess. There's Sam's gun, the one he left behind when he went to school. He touches the grip, unaccountably nostalgic, and glances up. Dean and Deacon are talking, very close, lit up through the screen door. While Sam watches, Deacon lifts a hand, grips Dean's neck. Almost paternal except for how it—isn't. Dean leans in, tucked close, before Deacon tips his chin up and—

Sam looks away, down the dark street. There's a long way to drive. In a little while he'll be in the ugly rental car, just getting it safely away from Deacon's house. He'll follow the Impala's taillights, trying to keep up, but he thinks Dean won't turn it into a race, this time. Then, finally, back in the passenger seat where he belongs, and then—off, on the dark highway in the middle of the night, racing toward some unknown danger. Home, at last. He doesn't know what it says about him, that he can hardly wait.


	3. Chapter 3

April 10, 2007

After the funeral, Deacon pulls up to the house and sits there in his truck for—he doesn't know how long. A while. It's still a sunny day. Rain in the morning, and chilly, but springtime around here makes the land pretty, makes it worth getting out into the world every day. He's not finding it such a balm, this spring.

He gets out, eventually, but doesn't go far. He settles down to his chair on the porch, looking out. Not really seeing. It was a nice service. Dalton's wife held it together pretty well. The little boy was too small to know what was going on, dandled on some female relative's knee. Deacon didn't know Dalton that well but he was an employee, and a pretty good one as far as Deacon could tell. This funeral was a sight better than the one they had for Kowalski, in the little plot the state would spring for. Kowalski didn't have family, or friends on the outside. Deacon went as witness, the priest they'd rustled up—because Kowalski was Catholic, who knew—doing his best without knowing the man at all. The other two, they got shipped off to their families. Heart attacks. They get the good and the bad, the young and the old, and Deacon knows that better than most. His own father carried off, back in the 70s. He was a mean bastard, most of the time, but it still seemed unfair that something could just reach in, turn off his heart like a snap of fingers. Here one minute, gone the next. So, it happens. Maybe not this frequently. Maybe not this fast.

Few years ago he bought a cell phone. Nothing at all fancy, not that he knows much about the damn things. Just a little black bullet of a thing, with just a few numbers programmed in—not by him. Just in case. That was the justification. Just in case.

He hasn't called. He doesn't. It's not—fair, to anyone involved. He keeps the phone charged, keeps it on him all the time, and he answers it after two rings unless he's actively breaking up a fight in the yard—but he doesn't call. Even so. Dalton's widow, lifting her chin as the pastor talked about _a better place_. A better place, Deacon's ass. Maybe it's true that there's a life beyond this one, but to pretend like it was some blessing in disguise—no. And he'd said, he has said, over and over, every time they hung up even if the calls were getting rarer: _you need me, I'll be there. No matter what I'm doing, okay?_ Deacon had said, the first time, smiling, _breaking speed limits, right?_ and gotten the response, _Not stopping for red lights_.

It's not right but he doesn't have anyone else to call. He would've called John—but, of course, it's far too late for that.

He's turning the phone over and over in his hands, and he sighs. Stupid to pussyfoot around it like this. He thinks of his old dad again, saying _so what if it's hard? What's worth doing that isn't?_ Probably he didn't have quite this situation in mind, but hell if the old drunk didn't have a point.

Deacon opens the phone, and finds the contacts, and finds the right name—David Lee Roth. Whoever that is. He dials. Birds sing in the trees all around, chattery and happy with spring. Mating calls. Deacon listens to them, while the phone rings. He tries to think what to say, if Dean picks up, and until the click of the call being accepted his head is, awfully, entirely, empty.

*

John died. That was a _heart attack_, too. That was back—late last May, or early June maybe it was. It was Sam that called him, unexpectedly, a little while after it happened. His phone chirped and he'd read _SW_ on the readout, and hadn't even realized Dean had programmed the number in until he picked up and heard Sam's voice, careful over who knew how many miles away, saying, _Deacon, I—I've got some bad news_.

His first thought was unbearable. Hearing what it actually was, he's not ashamed to know it as a relief. It wasn't a surprise, either. In the first confusion he hardly knew what to say. He'd asked if the boys were all right, which was a fool's question, but Sam had been polite, even if his voice was thick, like he'd barely stopped crying. _Yeah, we're doing okay. I just thought you should know._ He didn't mention his brother and Deacon didn't ask, not then. Took another few weeks before he got a call from Dean and Dean didn't say a single word about it, wanted to tell Deacon all about their big hunt for H.H. Holmes. Deacon listened, asked questions where they were appropriate. Heard the strain in Dean's voice and wanted to get his hands on him, wanted to do what he'd done so many times over their years together. It wasn't something he could offer, though, for fear Dean would have the misery of figuring out how to say no.

They arrive two days later. When Deacon called they were in Pennsylvania, taking care of some no-doubt horrible thing. He takes a couple of the vacation days he's been letting pile up, which means he's at home, sitting again on his porch in the pretty spring mid-morning, when he hears that heavy V8 growl roaring closer up the hill, and he puts down his book to watch the gleaming black bulk of it pull around and kiss the curb. In the passenger seat Sam's head is turned away, saying something maybe, and there's a quiet moment where the engine cuts and the door doesn't open. Deacon can't quite see Dean. Against all odds his stomach flutters, nervous almost like he's a boy again. He drags a hand through his hair, finds himself smiling. Like he doesn't know the score, here. Like he hasn't known it, for years.

He stands up and the driver-side door opens, almost in unison. Loud creak that Dean wouldn't ever oil out, who knows why. "Hey, if it ain't the welcoming committee," Dean calls across the yard, and Deacon tips an imaginary cap, and as expected it makes Dean smile ear-to-ear. Bright enough that Deacon can't see any other details as he walks across the grown-wild grass and clover, and then Dean pounds up the two steps and he's in Deacon's arms, warm and immediate and smelling like a long drive, his mouth pressed into Deacon's neck, his body so suddenly—here. Deacon closes his eyes, cups the back of his head. Ah, now. It's been—a long time.

Dean makes a small, deep sound in his chest, gripping at Deacon's back almost too tight, before he pushes back. He licks his lips, looks at Deacon's mouth, and Deacon could—but over Dean's shoulder, there's Sam. Out of the car, bags over his shoulder, looking out over the trees crowded up the back of the hill. So careful not to intrude.

Deacon cups Dean's cheek, takes the opportunity of almost-privacy to thumb under the soft sweet swell of his lower lip—but then he shifts, claps the side of his neck, rocks him a little. "It's good to see you," he says, and stows any other thing, for now. Dean grins at him, lopsided, shoves at his shoulder, and then Deacon can call out, "Sam," and Sam pretends like he hasn't been staring at a pinecone for far too long and waves, comes over. He shakes Deacon's hand, and Deacon rolls his eyes and allows it, but tugs him in for a hug, too, even if it's not got the same things behind it. "Good of you boys to come," he says, when he lets Sam go, and they both nod, immediately. They don't actually look that much alike, except for all the ways they do.

"Like you even gotta ask," Dean says, and Sam right over the top of him says, "Of course, Deacon," and Deacon shakes his head at them. Been too long.

Inside, his kitchen gets raided almost immediately. Drove through the night, just like he figured, and Dean's starving. "We could've stopped in Paducah," Sam says, and Dean rolls his eyes exaggeratedly for Deacon to see, like it's an old argument. He's got the things for sandwiches, turkey and swiss cheese and those pickles Dean started to buy and that Deacon got the taste for, and he passes out beers even if the sun's not quite past the yardarm, yet. They probably need it.

He asks about whatever job they were doing and gets a jumbled mess of details, Dean telling the story and Sam jumping in to correct him. Sniping at each other, jostling at the kitchen table, but it's not meanspirited, not a real fight. Not like the last time he saw them. It's something about a nymph—"a _dryad_," Sam says, and Dean says, "Okay, David Eddings, pardon me, a _dryad_, as I was _saying—_" and Deacon doesn't listen to the details but watches them, instead. They seem all right. A few months, since the last time Dean called, and he knows something's looming over them, something harder maybe even than what happened to John, but they're not showing it, at least not now. Dean's a little skinnier, he thinks. A little more like the boy who showed up on his step, those years ago, except for that he's maybe squarer, in himself. A little less likely to crack along certain foundations, maybe. It's hard to tell. There's so much he hasn't seen, and it's not like it comes through in phone calls, spaced out months apart.

Dean finishes his story and his beer, and then rolls the empty along the table and sits up straighter. "Anyway," he says. "You need help. What's happening at the jail?"

He told most of the story over the phone, but he tells it again. Deaths seeming at random, too many too fast. Right after they opened up the old cellblock, that had been closed since long before Deacon took on this job. Sam nods along to the details, leaned back in his chair. "I did some research, sounds like you're right about it not being natural causes," he says. And then—"What do you know about Mark Moody?"

*

By nightfall they have a plan, even if it has Sam straining the limits of his politeness. He kept pacing until Dean smacked his leg on a pass and said, "You're making me dizzy," and Sam smacked his hand right back, like they're little kids again, but he subsided. Deacon didn't bother hiding his smile.

Even so, Sam wasn't satisfied, and his nervousness had his knee jogging until he said, getting to his feet: "We might not have to, if—" and then he was off, borrowing Dean's keys, to check the coroner's records on Moody. Something about his body. Apparently the internet hadn't had all the information he wanted, which was a surprise. Deacon had been under the impression that it knew every single damn thing.

"Office is over in Little Rock," Deacon says, when the screen door's slammed behind Sam and the Impala's already roared to life.

Dean rolls his eyes. "He's driven a lot farther than that to get his way," he says, and it should be the big brother tone he puts on whenever he's around Sam, only. Sam's gone, and now it's just him and Dean, in the house in the gathering dark. Sun's snuck down past the horizon and they've turned on the lamps, and Dean's shrugged out of that big leather coat that doesn't fit him right and he's just soft flannel and jeans with a tear in the knee, fiddling with the paper label on his beer bottle, alone on the couch, in the spot that used to be his.

Last time he was here—that was before John died. They'd been up in New York state dealing with some painting, and they were on their way to Oklahoma for something else absurd, and Dean had left Sam in a motel a few hours away and knocked on Deacon's door around midnight, standing there in the porchlight looking tired down to the bone.

He doesn't look tired, now, or at least not tired in the same way. Maybe Deacon wasn't right, before, when he thought Dean had found his footing. Maybe a steady footing isn't something his life can offer.

"Seems like Sam'll be gone for a few hours, then," Deacon says, and Dean's eyelashes dip. Deacon looks at him, at the teeth he's got tugged into his still-soft mouth, and shakes his head. "Kid, you're killing me, here."

Dean's eyes are big when Deacon tugs him up to his feet, but then he goes smug, pleased. Still not looking Deacon in the eye, but that's all right. They've got some time. When he kisses Dean it's just—like it always was, like it is, every time. So soft, warm and tasting like beer, and that tiny sound Dean makes in the pit of his chest like it's somehow a surprise. Like four years of living together, of sharing a bed, of a life about as close to married as Deacon'll ever get—like that never quite stuck in his head. He's got a thick layer of stubble, scratchy, delicious for Deacon to drag his fingers against, holding his jaw. Dean's hands find Deacon's waist, his hips. When they pull apart there's that tinge of red riding high on his cheekbones, his ears tipping toward pink, and he's smiling. That's all Deacon wanted to see.

"Miss me?" Dean says, and even with everything he's really asking.

"Never," Deacon says, tracing the shape of his lower lip. For that, for the tone of voice, Dean's eyes finally slide up and meet his, and oh, lord. Yeah, Deacon doesn't have the fortitude to miss him. He'd be doing it all the time.

They have hours, and it's not like Sam doesn't know, even if he does come back early. They don't rush. Deacon takes Dean to his bedroom—what was their bedroom—and it's a pleasure to get him out of his clothes, to get his pretty skin bare in the lamplight. A tattoo on his chest, something arcane looking from the design, all black, and Dean shrugs when Deacon thumbs over it, looks at him questioning. "It's for protection," Dean says, "Sam's got one, too." Makes something around his eyes tight and Deacon shrugs, says, "Looks good," and Dean goes pleased, instead of whatever thought was crowding in before.

Naked, Dean says, "I'm grubby," and Deacon noses up against the back of his ear, holds him, breathes in his sweat, the road-smell, the old clothes. Not at all like he minds, and Dean's shiver makes it seem like he knows it, but they shower together, anyway. A few new little scars, raised and bumpy under the warm slick of the water. A big bruise, on his back; a spot on his shoulder that's sore. Nothing Deacon can do about those, and nothing that could be helped by asking. Instead he washes Dean's hair, little as there is of it, and Dean goes boneless and pleasure-stupid as a spoiled cat. At least they still have that, Deacon thinks, unaccountably tender. He kisses Dean's shoulder-freckles, holding his hips. All that time apart and Deacon can still give him this.

In bed, damp, he sucks Dean's dick, soft and slow and not enough. There were times he'd tie him up for it, but not tonight—"Hands up, baby," he says, and Dean knows to cling to the headboard and keep his thighs wide and open and let Deacon do what he wants, and he does, beautifully. Time to play, to indulge. After tonight, Deacon doesn't know when he'll get another chance. And, after all, Dean still makes the same sound when Deacon runs his teeth against his heavy pretty balls. Deacon smiles, kisses the soft skin. He intends to use every second he's got.

By the time he fucks Dean, finally—by the time he has him almost crying, he's so overstimulated, and then actually crying, tears streaking down into his hair—by the time he's wrenched one orgasm out of him too fast, and then wrung out another, terribly slow—their previous shower's been pretty well undone. Dean's muscles jump and shudder when he's finally done and Deacon can barely hold himself up. He tugs out slow, a mess following. Slick, shining, his skin sore and red. Gorgeous. Dean hardly makes a whimper, breathing shaky but deep and his eyes closed against the light. Some joint cracks when Deacon kneels between Dean's knocked-open legs. "That was perfect, baby," he says, hands on Dean's sweaty thighs, and Dean moans, tiny but real, and Deacon has to pull him up, get him close, hold him.

When Dean's calmer, they lie together in the wrecked bed. Dean's tucked in against his chest, his arms folded up between them, and Deacon can't really stop touching him. Not that he wants to, and not that he thinks Dean minds. Been so long, maybe he shouldn't have gone as intense as he did. There's still salt-stained shine on Dean's face and maybe it was too much. He runs his thumb along the sticky line of Dean's cheekbone, sweeps along the stubble, holds his neck. Feels the slow, almost drugged beat of his heart.

"So, I got a terrible criminal in my bed," Deacon says, quiet.

He gets a little smile, Dean's eyes still closed. His eyelashes are a wonder. "Yeah," he says, hoarse after all the noise he was making. "Clyde Barrow, that's me."

Those news stories. It was a shock to see Dean's mugshot all over the police boards, back when he was a _serial killer_ in St. Louis; downright funny to see him as a hostage-taking bank robber, and Sam joining him in it, those few months back. He didn't look too in control in the police footage they kept showing.

"Means it'll be a race," Deacon says. Dean's eyes finally open and he looks at Deacon frowning, sleepy. Lord above. "FBI coming for you two, even if you're in my jail. Can't keep you safe from that."

Little flicker of realization and then Dean rolls his eyes, promptly closes them after and snuggles in closer. They're all sweat and stickiness and it's mostly vile, but Deacon doesn't want to move, either. "FBI," Dean repeats. If he worked harder he might be able to cram more disdain into it, but it'd be a feat. "It'll be fine. You're worrying like Sammy."

"If one of us is the worrier," Deacon says, and Dean prods his gut, from somewhere in the shadowy tangle between them. An old argument, not that it ever really amounted to a real argument. When they were keeping house together, and Dean would head off all over the country, Deacon was fine with that because it wasn't his to say, first of all, but mostly because—that was who Dean was, what he'd been raised to be, and Deacon wasn't in the business of trying to make a man something he wasn't. Even if sometimes his heart just about gave up, waiting for the call. Waiting for the door to creak open, on those lonely midnights.

The times Dean would disappear off after one of John's rare calls, those times Deacon would really wonder. The times Dean went to California, even rarer though they were—and now. He keeps his cell on him, all the time, but really. He's not waiting. Not like he was.

They came to visit together, twice. Laying low after the St. Louis debacle, for almost a week, and Dean had been shy of being honest with Sam there, and Deacon honored that, of course. He knew more than enough about how to be careful. Didn't mean he was a monk, though, and one night when Sam was supposed to be asleep he'd taken Dean out onto the porch under the cover of night and taken him just a little apart, just a taste, practically. Next morning, Sam could hardly look at either of them, and maybe he wasn't quite as asleep as Deacon had thought. Still, he shook Deacon's hand and looked him in the eye when they left, said thank you and meant it, and Deacon admired the kid for that.

Second time was harder. That was after—something they wouldn't say. A reaper was involved, that's all Deacon knew. Dean was pale. Sad. Less careful, even with Sam there, and he'd clung to Deacon like on one of his worst nights when he got out of the car, his fingers curled cold against Deacon's throat. Over his shoulder, Sam had watched, a laser focus on Dean's back. Heart in his face. Something had happened, that was sure, and something had shifted, too. Took a minute, for Dean to let go, and that night he went into Deacon's room while Deacon and Sam were still sitting up, talking about nothing important, and Deacon had seen Sam's face, when the door closed. The way it changed.

Dean's sleepy, but he's still awake. "Sam'll be back," he mumbles, and Deacon hums assent, holding the curve of his bicep. Freckles even there, picked out in the lamplight. "Think he'll get something?"

Deacon rubs his arm, soothing and slow. "If he does, it'll keep 'till morning," he says. Dean's mouth curves and he burrows in, and Deacon watches, rapt, while his breathing slowly evens out, and he finally sleeps. He doesn't get enough. Deacon may not be on the inside, anymore, but he knows that much at least. If the world's kind he'll get eight hours, at least. Their harebrained scheme won't take them away before dawn. Not this time.

When Dean's dead to the world, snoring that tiny back-of-the-throat snore, Deacon extracts himself from the bed. Takes another shower, getting off the come and sweat, the smeared traces of lube. Took him almost a year of having him before Deacon realized that Dean actually liked it, for reasons Deacon let him keep private. He indulges the mess, but it's not for him. He scrubs dry, folds himself into his robe. There's no chance he's going to sleep, and he doesn't know if he can take a full night with Dean in his arms, knowing what's to come.

In the kitchen, Sam's sitting at the table. Deacon actually holds a hand to his chest, he's so startled. "You're back," he says, stupid.

Sam's got a cup of coffee in front of him, his shoulders hunched. "I drove fast," he says, eyes pinned to the linoleum.

It's—a little after one. He doesn't know when Sam got here. Deacon didn't hear the door open, didn't hear the car. He was focused on all the noise Dean was making.

"Any luck?" Deacon says, instead of asking. Lord, he's almost embarrassed. At his age.

Sam shakes his head. Means the plan'll go ahead, then. He pours himself a cup of the coffee and hesitates, but it's his own house. He sets himself across the table, takes a sip, grimaces. Bitter.

There's a pop, somewhere. Some beam, settling. Old house, Deacon's used to its quirks, but Sam's attention jumps toward the sound and that means Deacon can finally see his face. Drawn, tired. As tired as Dean was, maybe, but there's a different edge to it. Deacon doesn't know him as well, not nearly as well, but he can see that, at least.

"Worried about tomorrow?" Deacon says, for something to say.

Sam glances at him, surprised for some reason, and then shrugs, looking back at his coffee and not drinking it. Wise move, it's terrible. "Spent a long time trying to dodge the cops," he says. "It's going to feel weird to go to jail on purpose."

Deacon rubs his jaw. He's almost got a beard going. "It's a real risk," he says. "But I can get you out. One way or another, you're not staying there. Even if I do make a great host."

That gets a little smile, at least, brief though it is. "Very accommodating," Sam says, and then his mouth twists, and he glances toward the dark hall.

It's not something to apologize for, but Deacon almost feels himself brought to it. Dean's twisted-up about it and probably always will be, even long past when their association will end. Shy of Sam seeing, of anyone seeing. Deacon knows, though, that part of the privacy's for Sam's benefit, too, even if Dean doesn't think of it that way. Funny. Sam seems to see a lot more than Dean wants him seeing. Deacon's not sure if it goes both ways.

"Your brother," Deacon says. Moved to it, somehow. "He doesn't like to talk about anything bothering him, but he still manages to say—an awful lot."

Sam looks at him, after a too-long pause. "It's been a tough year," he says. "Dean likes to pretend things are okay, but." He stops. Deacon nods. But.

Sam sits hunched, like he's trying to be less big than he is. He's… young. Younger maybe than Dean was, when he first came to Deacon's door.

The world's crowding up on him, though, Deacon thinks. It's in how he looks at Deacon square-on, his hair swept away from his eyes. Tired, but that edge. Maybe it's that he's ready. For what, Deacon doesn't know. He's made it his business for so long not to know, not to get involved. It was supposed to mean his heart wasn't on the line, when finally there came that day he knew was going to come, when the young pretty thing started to look away, toward a horizon Deacon wouldn't be crossing. Turns out, maybe the horizon was a lot closer than Deacon realized. Turns out, too, that Deacon's a fool. Like he could decide where his heart would go. Well. At least the fool part isn't exactly a surprise.

He takes a breath, resolves. He should get it out in the open at least to someone, and Sam's the better choice. "After you get out," Deacon says, folding his arms on the table, "it'll probably be real dangerous around here. I'll be a suspect in aiding your escape, and they'll be watching. Probably won't be a good idea for you to come back."

Sam frowns. "Dean'll want to come," he says. "Let you know that it's done."

Deacon shrugs. "I believe you boys can take care of it," he says. "Better not to take the risk."

Dean always said that Sam was smart. Deacon can see when he gets it, what Deacon's not saying. His eyes clear and his shoulders lift, his spine uncurving until he sits up straight, to his real height. Surprise, but also—relief, Deacon thinks, even if he's trying not to show it. Smart, but young. "Are you sure?" he says, eyes flicking to the hall.

"Yeah, I'm sure," Deacon says, and sees Sam sit back, looking at him. Surprise, still, real. "It wouldn't be fair. To anyone. Least of all him. Things end, Sam."

Nations, empires, civilizations. Certainly a thing as small as this, between an old man and a young one. Still, Sam seems struck, even as Deacon thinks—knows, maybe—that the relief will overcome it. He doesn't look too close at why, because that's not his business either.

"I'm sorry," Sam says. Sounds helpless, like it's all he can think to say.

"Don't be," Deacon says. After these years of thinking, Deacon's realized there's no point in assigning blame, or fault. "Some magnets pull a particular way. No point in trying to make them go against their nature."

Sam frowns again, not understanding, and Deacon waves a hand. He'll get it later, or he won't. "I'm going to bed," he says, standing. "You should, too. Big day tomorrow."

He leaves the crappy coffee for Sam, if he wants it. In his bedroom Dean's still sprawled over the top of the blankets, golden. Deacon sighs, closing the door behind himself, and eases down on the bed. Maybe he won't sleep, but he supposes it can't hurt to try. The nights are still a little cold; might as well take the opportunity for warmth, while he has it.

*

He goes to work the next day. Time to get back into keeping up appearances. Before he leaves, he kisses Dean one last time, leaning over him in the bed, feeling his sour-sleepy grumble at being woken before the dawn. "You lock up, before you go," he says, and Dean blinks at him, barely understanding. God, he's beautiful. Deacon touches his lips, sore inside, despite all that thinking and resolve. "I'll be seeing you, baby."

Maybe it's cowardice, not to talk to Dean. Not maybe; he knows it is. Too afraid of hurt, for both of them. Maybe Dean will hate him for it, in some year yet to come—if he gets more years, if some horror doesn't take him like it did his dad. Deacon thinks not, though. The calls come slower and slower, and the life draws him further in, and one day what was will be a memory. Good, he hopes. Something to look on that was a respite from darker days.

His own memory will be this, for years. Not them in the orange jumpsuits, playacting, or the fights. Not sparring and fronting, not the grinning confidence or the feel of his jaw, flexed, in front of all those cons in the yard. No, this: mussed and tangled in the sheets, sour breath, hair flat on one side. His mouth, puffed and soft, and his eyes softer, and his skin warm from sleep. Deacon rubs under his lip, fixing it there, pinned under his heart. Then he leaves, closing the door and going down the steps in the grey-gold light. A fresh day, dewy, growing things in the air. The birds are already starting to sing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [posted here on my tumblr if you'd like to reblog](https://zmediaoutlet.tumblr.com/post/187408656994/fic-someday-well-go-all-the-way)


End file.
